“I feel like people use celebrity as an excuse to be a jerk. I wasn’t a jerk before I got famous, I ain’t gonna be a jerk now.” – Ne-Yo

Ne-Yo visited The Breakfast Club to talk about everything that’s going on in his world including turning down a role to play Martin Luther King Jr., writing for other artists, how fatherhood has affected him, new venture with Malibu Red, fifth album pushed back to get everything right and the “emotional disconnect” of R&B music.

Switching from Def Jam to Motown:

“[I’m the] Senior Vice President of A&R at Motown Records. I moved over to Motown which I thought was gonna be a little more dramatic than it was cause I had teary-goodbyes set up for my Def Jam people but Basically I moved to another room in the same damn house. We right across the hall from each other.”

Pop Music & R&B:

“If you listen to my Pop music verses all the other stuff out there, there’s still some soul in there. My voice is my voice, I can’t escape that. The soul in my voice comes from my R&B background. That’s always gonna be who I am. I’m an R&B artist first. I’m an R&B artist who was given the opportunity to move into a world where I can do Pop music too. I pride myself on being one of the kind of artists that can turnaround and do a Pitbull record and turnaround and do a record with [Young] Jeezy. Not a lot of artists can do that.”

Does likes Hollywood more than the music industry?

“No, not at all, not at all. Because it’s too much hurry up and wait. Music is instant gratification. You go in the studio, you got an idea, you get in the booth, you lay it down, you can listen to it right, then, and there. The Red Tails movie, that didn’t come out until two years after we shot it. That’s too long to wait. I forgot we did the damn thing.”